Tucker Grizzwell, a lovable grizzly sixth-grader, lives with his perpetually-in-curlers mama, Flora, his food-loving papa, Gunther, and his bespectacled, boy-crazy sister, Fauna. The Grizzwells live in a large treehouse in a friendly wood, much like another famous literary bear family, although Tucker’s family is more realistically messy and skips the generous dollops of didacticism. Told day by day in tidy comic-strip vignettes laden with puns and one-liners, Tucker’s week goes from bad to worse as he faces crushes, bullies, barf, and report cards. With a cast of characters reminiscent of Walt Kelly’s Pogo’s, the Grizzwells evoke a certain nostalgia and portray a somewhat outdated familial ideal: the mother stays at home, the father has a vague-sounding job, and they seem to be comfortably middle-class. However, Schorr and Smith’s anthropomorphic populace retains a comfortably homespun feel, and their retro-tinged lens is tempered by some modern flourishes such as smartphones and video games. Expect this chuckle-rich yarn to appeal to a wide array of readers ranging from Sunday-comics aficionados (there are particular nods to Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes) to those who have grown up with the Berenstain Bears to fans of Jeff Kinney’s Greg Heffley.

For fans of the funny papers—and goodness knows, there are many
. (Graphic fiction. 7-12)

The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.

When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.

Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
(Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)

Tiny, sassy Bob the dog, friend of The One and Only Ivan (2012), returns to tell his tale.

Wisecracking Bob, who is a little bit Chihuahua among other things, now lives with his girl, Julia, and her parents. Happily, her father works at Wildworld Zoological Park and Sanctuary, the zoo where Bob’s two best friends, Ivan the gorilla and Ruby the elephant, live, so Bob gets to visit and catch up with them regularly. Due to an early betrayal, Bob doesn’t trust humans (most humans are good only for their thumbs); he fears he’s going soft living with Julia, and he’s certain he is a Bad Dog—as in “not a good representative of my species.” On a visit to the zoo with a storm threatening, Bob accidentally falls into the gorilla enclosure just as a tornado strikes. So that’s what it’s like to fly. In the storm’s aftermath, Bob proves to everyone (and finally himself) that there is a big heart in that tiny chest…and a brave one too. With this companion, Applegate picks up where her Newbery Medal winner left off, and fans will be overjoyed to ride along in the head of lovable, self-deprecating Bob on his storm-tossed adventure. His wry doggy observations and attitude are pitch perfect (augmented by the canine glossary and Castelao’s picture dictionary of dog postures found in the frontmatter). Gorilla Ivan described Julia as having straight, black hair in the previous title, and Castelao's illustrations in that volume showed her as pale-skinned. (Finished art not available for review.)

With Ivan’s movie out this year from Disney, expect great interest—it will be richly rewarded.
(afterword)
(Fiction. 8-12)